


Scars

by Ulalume



Series: Major Grys [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Grys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulalume/pseuds/Ulalume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some find their differences can isolate them and some find their differences can motivate them. This is how my trooper was motivated to change her situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

She wakes up with her heart pounding, remembers the taste of copper and salt in her mouth, the smell of rotting garbage, of piss. She remembers pain and fear.

She remembers the hiss of slurs, the hatred behind their words, the feel of their hands and knees on her back and arms, pinning her to the duracrete behind the park. She is face down, the ground biting into her cheek while they laugh at her, laugh at her skin, her eyes, her _Imperialness_.

She doesn’t even know what it means to be Imperial. She only knows the Republic. Her Republic.

Grys doesn’t remember her parents. She was barely a year old when Republic forces discovered her, half frozen on Rhen Var. The official record listed her parents as “unknown employees of the Chiss Expansionary Fleet,” academics conducting Imperial research during the Great Galactic War. They were assumed to have died in the battle.

She owes her life to the Republic.

But she is Chiss. The enemy.

The medics said she was lucky. Her eye narrowly missed the slice of the knife. Her face hadn’t been so lucky.

But she was alive. Her body and spirit were bruised, but she was alive to feel every ache.

The authorities told her that when they found her, she wouldn’t stop saying one word.

“Never.”

That was all she could say for hours. She learned later that she had fought her attackers so violently that one would never regain the use of his hands, and she had smiled inwardly. He would never again hold a knife to anyone’s face. Never hurt another the way he had hurt her.  
  
 _Never._  
  
As a ward of the Republic, reconstruction of the damage hadn’t been an option. She was merely patched up and sent back to the orphanage. Age 11 with battle scars. The other kids kept their distance.  
  
In time, she found she didn’t mind the scar. She had already accepted that she unsettled people, that she would stand out wherever she went. The scar reminds her not to be complacent. The scar reminds her to be prepared.  
  
She lies awake, waiting for her breath to slow, to relax back into sleep, and remembers that day. She remembers pain and fear, and something else. Resolve.  
  
Resolve to change her circumstances.  
  
When she turned 18, Grys enlisted in the Republic Army.


End file.
